News and Media

Article By: Piper Hale
Published: Nov 22, 2011

Hailey Lowe has always been an artist, drawing and painting from an early age. However, she never considered pursuing art as a career until recently. As an undergraduate, she studied advertising. After graduating, she took a position as an assistant manager at an Atlanta art gallery, where her exposure to the fine arts fueled her interest in the field. For the first time, she was surrounded by artists who were making a living from their craft. Realizing that she too could pursue her interests professionally, she came to SCAD to work toward an arts administration degree. Shortly after starting her graduate studies, Hailey says, "I took sculpture as an elective with [professor] Martha Whittington and just fell in love. I realized I am an artist and just took that leap into the sculpture world."

Hailey has always been a fine artist at heart, but she thinks acknowledging that earlier would have been difficult. "A problem that lots of artists have today is the fear of actually being an artist," says Hailey, "and not knowing where to go and how to be successful. But SCAD is one of those rare schools that actually helps you figure out every step to take in becoming a successful professional artist."

For Hailey, her success has included an internship at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami and a continuing assistant manager position at Gregg Irby Fine Art. She has also shown her work in several galleries, both in solo shows and group exhibitions.

Hailey's work tends to take its inspiration from everyday societal boundaries, such as the struggle that arises from institutional censorship. Most recently, she has taken an interest in the dynamic boundaries between nature and technology. She is particularly interested in exploring the manner in which nature, when left to its own devices, reclaims civilization over time.

Her recent installation "Machines of Loving Grace" explored this struggle; for this work, Hailey created seven salt licks sculpted into the shape of typewriters. She left them on a farm in southern Georgia, guarded only by a motion-activated camera. After two weeks, the salt licks had completely dissolved. The footage from Hailey's camera shows hordes of deer nibbling at the salt licks, wearing them away over time, while the occasional coyote lurks in the background, hungrily watching the deer. Hailey exhibited a video installation of the edited footage at Archetype Gallery in Atlanta. "It really shows that no matter how far we urbanize and impede our technologies onto nature, there's always going to be that natural resistance to technology," says Hailey.

She has further explored this conflict between nature and urbanism in other installations. Recently, she worked with a team to remap a common urban route over a rural setting; after mapping the daily trajectory many professionals use to navigate midtown Atlanta, Hailey and her group transferred the route coordinates to a forest setting and then hiked it to show the drastic difference environment can make to a basic walking pattern. Their performance was documented and displayed in Whitespace Gallery.

Most of Hailey's works are interactive installations, often prompting gallery-goers to be involved participants in the art rather than passive onlookers. "As artists, it's our job to promote social change," she says. "And if you don't ask people to become active participants or to engage in those conversations, then they won't participate in the change."

Hailey says her motivation for focusing on social issues close to her has been fueled constantly by the sculpture faculty, who insist that every student installation be founded on a strong conceptual basis. "The sculpture department is very concept-driven," she says. "SCAD is a very encouraging place to be, but they're not going to just let you sit there and make work. They're really going to push you to make the best art that you can."

Hailey is now finished with the coursework for her degree, and is devoting her energy to conceptualizing her M.F.A. exit show. She plans to use "Machines of Loving Grace" as a jumping-off point for another installation that focuses solely on coyotes. She cites urban sprawl's intrusion on coyotes' natural habitat and the resulting coyote problems many cities are facing as an archetypal example of the struggle between urbanism and nature.

Recently, Hailey completed a residency at Mildred's Lane, and is now working as a studio assistant to Gregor Turk for his exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. Hailey says she couldn't have found these positions without her newfound expertise in navigating the fine arts world. "If I had gone somewhere else, I wouldn't have fully realized that I can be an artist and I can make this work," she says. "SCAD really helps you visualize how you can make that work in the real world and helps you make it happen."

 

View more of Hailey's work.